Prim Pontificates - Wargames should be more asymmetrical

[Primarch]

We've all read those stories where the heroes find themselves surrounded by an exactly equal number of opponents. Those last stands against perfectly balanced forces where each side has a 50/50 chance of winning. Who can forget the classic X-Wing attack on the death star, when the rebels checked with the Imperials to see how many Tie Fighters they could field. Or the Battle of the Pelenor Fields when Sauron spent the same number of points on his army as Gondor did.

There is something that just makes battles against the odds more exciting. When the heroes of our stories have to succeed against superior numbers, things are just that bit more interesting. And that is something that we can, nay should try to replicate from time to time in our games. I can see the argument for using points values in random pick up games, but there is nothing stopping players from organising things ahead of time and setting up a special scenario.

Asymmetrical games have been some of the most fun games that I have played. By giving opposing sides different quantities (and qualities) of troops, along with different objectives, you can do so much more than play the same old games over and over. It is hardly like points values in games are actually that balanced anyway. I have a sneaking suspicion that the whole concept of points was only introduced to give an impression of balance and fairness in games to make them more acceptable to the average gamer.

By introducing imbalance, you can create a more narrative game, but you do have to change what constitutes a victory.
In your next game, why not try shaking things up a little. For example:

- An important general and his elite guard have become separated from the main force. The enemy throws everything they have at this high value target. (Player A gets a powerful character and an elite unit. Player B gets more points, but can only take masses of average troops. Player A wins if the general leaves the far side of the table alive).

- A desperate last stand. (Player A gets a smaller force than B, and has to hold out until the end of the game).

- A unit is tasked with escorting a valuable cargo. (Player A gets a set of transports that they must escort off the table. Player B has to capture the transports and can bring on a larger force from reserve).

So, do you play asymmetrical games? Why, or why not?

[ashdevon]

I tend to paint more than game these days. However I do like to play King's of War once a year with a buddy. It's great as it allows us to field anything from our historical and fantasy collections. Last year skaven vs Samurai and this year kingdom of man historical and fantasy armies. There are points values but we tend to field what looks fun.

Great to see you post again Prim.

[Jye Nicolson]

The latest Warhammer 40K mission pack/cards includes a bunch of assymetrical missions and maps so someone in Nottingham agrees with you!

I go back and forth because as a casual player with no real prospect of tournament play, I don't particularly care about adhering to competitive formats, but there's also powerful advantages in the missions and maps associated with that kind of play when they're taking advantage of the opportunity for refined, iterated and pressure tested design. GW is doing that now, which might be a historical aberration but has pretty good results.

Asymmetrical scenarios IME are often the most *promising* but are a riskier design and thus have a heightened reliance on execution. Design is hard and adequate play testing is even harder so I think it's not uncommon for the incentives of actual play to contravene the intent of the designers. For example, I remember a big Crusade battle in 9th where the mission intended a fighting retreat, with the defenders trying to flee off a far board edge while the attackers pursued. As part of the defending alliance I simply charged my Sisters forwards, their martyrdom guaranteeing the survival of Matt's Guard. While that was highly thematic it also meant the attackers simply never had any chance of achieving their victory condition.

I'm sure many asymmetric scenarios are better designed than that one, and in principle I'm eager to play such a thing. In practice though at game days my games aren't pre-arranged and shuffling the mission deck again is a far safer bet for having a good game.

I'm probably deeply biased by playing mostly 40K with it's very heavy reliance on terrain, which makes the competitive terrain layouts highly attractive. Even within the GW bubble if I was playing more Age of Sigmar I'd probably have more confidence in asymmetric scenarios.

[Primarch]

For sure, asymmetrical games need more thought and planning than your standard 1000 point, matches play games. Some iteration on the first play through is probably also required, or a willingness to adjust things on the fly.

@Jye - From the description of your fighting retreat example, I would say that sounds like a good example of an asymmetrical game. A small blocking force held up a larger attacking force, allowing for the other part of the army to escape. It also seems thematically appropriate for your army. The fact that the attackers couldn't get past your (assuming) much smaller number of units isn't a fault in the design, but rather the challenge your opponents failed to overcome. How much time did your opponents spend planning for the game? Could they have done things differently? A second play through might have seen them bringing more units that could deepstrike behind your lines or outflank you. The only downside that I can see is that your partner didn't get to do much except run away.

But with more planning and thought, I think the scenario you played would be a fun one to try.

[Jye Nicolson]

But with more planning and thought, I think the scenario you played would be a fun one to try.

I think that's the rub really.

That particular scenario I think had some flaws that would undermine it anyway (tbf they might have been addressed by me doing what I was "supposed" to do), but that's not terribly important because it's easy to imagine one that didn't. GW does the "one side has to run off the board" narrative mission pretty often so I'm sure even they will get it right some day

But asymmetric/narrative missions do benefit from being pre-arranged and taking armies that fit the premise, rules and what the opponent can bring. Whereas pickup games have an affordance for just playing stock "Matched Play" (or local equivalent) where few assumptions are made about the forces in play and will nominally make for a fair game for the first random batch of models off the painting table that makes points vs the army from last month's game day that never actually got unpacked from the case.

So less about the ludic virtues of asymmetric (that I think everyone agrees is cool) vs matched play (that we don't typically have tournament practice reasons to prefer) so much as the logistics (or lack thereof) surrounding games. So a good narrative game will always be awesome if you can line one up, but it wouldn't be surprising to see more matched play. Repeating games is probably more of a logistical stretch (though not impossible obviously so would definitely very cool!).

That being said beyond the Crusade missions we played so much of in 9th, I have been doing a bit of asymmetric play in 10th in the form of solo play - Goonhammer's Fury of the Swarm and Fury of the Warboss modes are co-op/solo PVE vs larger armies of Tyranids and Orks respectively and the mission rules are asymmetric and form a mini campaign. Those are good fun and require no more prior arrangement than clearing some space in the tatami room to put down some boards When I paint some more of my Orks I really want to try the mission where Gretchin can steal trucks. There's also an official solo/co-op mode in Kill Team, requiring less space but also requiring me to actually paint my Kill Teams.

I'm focused on GW for obvious sunk cost fallacy reasons but I bet they're not even the best company for asymmetric/narrative in Nottingham, let alone the industry as a whole. Is anyone doing anything particularly cool in this space - do the Lardies get into it for example?

[Primarch]

There is definitely an appeal to just being able to rock up to a games day with an army and slam it on the table without needing to worry about arranging things beforehand, I can totally see that side of things. On the other hand, as Ashdevon mentioned above, you can also just field what looks cool.

The Solo PvE style of gaming encourages asymmetrical games as one side has a prescribed set of actions it must follow, while the other can react and adjust their plan to suit the changing situation. I have a set of similar solo-play rules to try for a historical game, if I can ever get round to painting up the minis for it.

As for other companies and how they do it, it varies by game and system, so I'll talk about those I know. Malifaux (while matching points values), gives both players individual objectives to pursue, which can lead to some interesting choices. The latest edition of the game apparently leans heavily into this. Overall though, it is a pick-up style of game.
Bolt Action is similar to 40K in many ways, and it is largely points driven, matches play. The core rules contain points for most of the bigger nations/more common units and then there are army lists containing more points values in codex-style books. However, there are numerous campaign supplements that include all sorts of new scenarios, which I would love to try out.
Black Powder/Hail Caesar (and most other Large Battle style games) emphasize scenarios using actual historical events. Some of the supplements for the games do introduce points values for pick up games, (I rarely see any mention of people using them) but they also introduce rules like one of your units switching sides mid-game.
Last year I played a couple of games of Zona Alfa, a post apocalypse skirmish game. Sides are balanced by points, but there are wandering monsters that pop out of the objectives that can throw things out of balance a bit.
Saga is the last game I'll mention and it is very much a points based game, though your faction abilities are semi-randomised using a dice based system that is similar in function to Warcry I believe.

There is also the example of campaign games like Necromunda, Blood Bowl and Mordheim, where games can quickly become lop-sided after a few campaign rounds. Games like that really need an umpire to make them fun though, otherwise good teams keep getting better and bad teams worse.

[kojibear]

As Jye pointed out, at heart, the great majority of gamers jump at the chance to immerse themselves in narrative play.

The emotional investment and immersion in the story certainly increases when you're rescuing civilians or holding out for reinforcements, or racing to sabotage the comms tower. Success isn't just about optimal list-building but how you approach your side’s unique situation.

Also another cool aspect of this kind of play is that asymmetry allows you to think about the unique aspects of each faction, or even the uniqueness of individual space marine chapters or craftworlds.

In short, it's just fun!

And has been pointed out, to make it really work well, you need good scenario design, you need to enjoy the role-play aspect and you need a shared narrative vision to really keep things fun and avoid one-sided frustration.

Oh, and preparing for a narrative game certainly helps you to decide what miniatures to build and paint up first from amid that grey pile of shame!

[me_in_japan]

All this is personal opinion, but I love narrative games (which is just another way of saying asymmetrical). I think if you're a frequent gamer, to whom rapid setup and smooth logistics matters, then balanced, points-driven games are the most applicable option. But, speaking for myself as someone who games only occasionally, a scenario that requires a bit of forethought and setup is no more or less onerous than a by-the-book 1500pts-a-side game. Either version is going to require me to take a good look at my army choices, either version is going to require me to consider each unit's role in the game, and at least in the narrative game I should have some idea of what I'm expected to do to win.

So for me, an imbalanced, narrative game is actually quite appealing.

The devil, however....

Is in the details. How does one design an enjoyably "balanced" imbalanced scenario. By which I mean, it's all well and good to have different victory conditions for each player, but how does one ensure a reasonably balanced chance of success? Or if the scenario is supposed to be more difficult for one side than the other, how to best establish what counts as a moral victory. Essentially, what's the difference between a Helm's Deep scenario and a Kobayashi-Maru scenario?

I think as long as both players were properly communicating pre game such that they had established shared expectations, a narrative game would be great. The issues would start to spring up as soon as the players had different ideas of what such a game entailed.

[ashdevon]

There's an article in last month's Wargames Illustrated about a game called The Woods. A skirmish strategy miniatures wargame where the objective is narrative. Ingeniously it has no dice, cards or random element. It takes away the frustration of rolling 1s and rewards players for their use of strategy. The game is created by an old school wargamer so it includes all the usual modifiers and tactics you are used to. It sounds interesting.

[The Underdweller]

There's an article in last month's Wargames Illustrated about a game called The Woods. A skirmish strategy miniatures wargame where the objective is narrative. Ingeniously it has no dice, cards or random element. It takes away the frustration of rolling 1s and rewards players for their use of strategy. The game is created by an old school wargamer so it includes all the usual modifiers and tactics you are used to. It sounds interesting.

No random element sounds different, but I wonder how they keep it interesting? I played a game of 40k once without using dice, just averages, and it was not good. Anyway, rolling ones can be fun in a frustrating way, as I know from many games of Blood Bowl.

I suppose in an asymmetrical game, the less powerful side could have a different goal that didn't involve "winning" - like they would inevitably be overcome, but they had to hold out for a certain number of turns - to complete a ritual or send a signal or whatever, or take out as many "bad guys" as possible.

I agree that it doesn't sound easy to set up, so I would rather have a game that was suited to it, with pre-planned scenarios, rather than trying to come up with something myself. Strange Aeons was something along those lines - although I suppose it was more similar to D&D than a wargame in some ways, with one player being the "GM".

Going off on a tangent from that, I am having a similar issue with Pathfinder 2nd Edition RPG. The game is designed to be balanced - which is great in one way - the characters to be around the same power level so that it's easy for the GM to plan encounters - but when played, comes across as underwhelming. Or maybe I'm just not playing it right.